250 Hours

Written by Colleen Nelson

Coteau Books

978-1-55-5—641-9

152 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2015

“I don’t want to set them. But it’s like if I don’t do it, something worse will happen.  Watching something burn means I’ve saved a different bad thing from happening.”  He knew it sounded crazy, but maybe she’d understand because there was hurt inside of her too. (pg. 68)

And Jess Sinclair is right.  The hurt that compels him to set fires, hence his 250 hours community service, is also in 18-year-old Sara Jean whose grandmother’s garage is being cleaned out by Jess.  But, while both deal with abandonment issues–Jess by his father eight years earlier and Sara Jean at two months of age by her mother–and have significant relationships with their grandmothers, Jess’s hurt is wrapped up in living with the double-edged discrimination of being Métis as Sara Jean deals with being shackled to small-town life as primary caregiver to her 450-lb. grandmother, Gam.

While the two teens attempt to accept their responsibilities to their families and communities, they yearn to become independent of the hurts that define their lives, and they find themselves drawn to each other, particularly after Sara Jean discovers memorabilia of her Grandpa’s teaching at the local residential school.   But everyone seems to be keeping secrets and the discrimination Sara Jean detects from her boyfriend and his family, her own Gam and Aunt Mim towards Jess and Aboriginal People compels her to learn more, especially after she finds a small pair of moccasins that, unbeknownst to her, Jess is convinced his kokum had made.

Colleen Nelson tells another powerful story (see my review of The Fall, Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2013) in 250 Hours, but focuses on small-town mindedness, the injustice of the residential schools, and family expectations in such a way that the reader will sympathize for Jess and Sara Jean who feel trapped by the stifling suffocation of their histories.  How do you break free to make a new life for yourself when there is so much holding you back?

There’s always a reason to stay.  I guess there has to be better reasons to go. (pg. 69)

Don’t be surprised if you feel enraged by the injustices perpetrated against these young people and against Aboriginal people.  That’s good because we all should be.  I suspect that 250 Hours is a truer reflection of life for many who experience blatant discrimination, whether wholesale as evoked by the residential school situations or  randomly by ignorant individuals, and for youth limited by the influence of family and peers.  Not surprising that everyone seems to know what's best for others. Thankfully, Colleen Nelson makes sure that Sara Jean's and Jess's stories are told, albeit in a fictionalized tale, to give them voice, freedom and limitless possibilities to be themselves.  It’s a powerful story of redemption where none seemed possible.

A Pocket Full of Murder

by R. J. Anderson

Atheneum Books For Young Readers

978-1-4814-3771-4

352 pp.

Ages 9-12

September 2015

R. J. Anderson, best known for her complex young adult fantasy novels involving faeries and magic   (e.g., Arrow, Nomad, etc.) and science fiction (e.g., Ultraviolet and Quicksilver) with romantic entanglements, delves into a very different fantasy with A Pocket Full of Murder.  But, R. J. Anderson is just as skilful in writing the middle-grade fiction immersed in magic and mystery that is A Pocket Full of Murder. 

Life for twelve-year-old Isaveth Breck and her sisters Annagail, Mimmi and Lilet is anything but easy since their Mama, a talented spell maker, has passed and Papa, a stonemason, has been without steady work.  Moreover, because of their Moshite ancestry and beliefs, the Brecks experience discrimination and limited opportunities.  But they keep on keeping on.  Though she had her schooling for becoming a healer interrupted, Annagail works at the shirt factory.  Papa looks for any small jobs, though resentful of a cancelled job for building the new charmery for Tarreton College.  And Isaveth is determined to learn to make Common Magic–different from Sagery, the magic of the Sages and the nobles–and sell her spell-tablets, for light, heat, etc.  just as her mother had once.

While poverty and discrimination may be their greatest concerns, the arrest of Papa for the murder of the governor of Tarreton College, Master Orien, the man who’d initially cancelled his commission for the charm house,  changes everything.  Luckily, Isaveth makes the acquaintance of an eye-patched street-boy named Quiz, who not only defends her from a local bully and also likes to listen to the talkie-play about justice seeker Auradia Champion but is convinced her father is innocent.  And Quiz is determined to help prove it.  Together, Isaveth and Quiz collaborate to infiltrate Tarreton College and the Workers’ Club to whom her father belonged to attempt to solve the of mystery of Master Orien’s death.  

But, R. J. Anderson makes the story more than just a murder mystery by infusing her tale with magic elements and embedding it in a society of unique hierarchy, beliefs, money and transportation.  Everything is fresh and thought-provoking, providing layers of newness to the concept of a whodunit for young readers.  And yet readers will recognize the issues of friendship, trust, independence, sadness, and family that will make it all so familiar and provoke empathy, allowing R. J. Anderson to share much wisdom to middle-grade readers.

You don’t have to be sad all the itime, you know.  It doesn’t make anything better. (pg. 138) 

…he believed things like friendship could be bought and sold so easily.  Everything was negotiable to him, even his principles.  But what was the point of being wealthy, or even comfortabley well off if you had to betray the people who cared about you  to get there?  What was the use of having everything if it cost you your soul? (pg. 335)

A Pocket Full of Murder has a superbly crafted murder mystery charmed with a world of new characters and a curious culture that will surely sustain a succession of plots featuring Isaveth and her compatriots.  And I look forward to revisiting Tarreton and its inhabitants in a new puzzle from R. J. Anderson, who continues to impress with the richness of her plots and the intricacy of her story-telling.  

Transferral: Book Launch (Toronto)

DCB /

Dancing Cat Books

 is pleased to launch its newest young adult science fiction book

Transferral

by Kate Blair

978-1-770864542

Dancing Cat Books

240 pp.

Ages 13+

October, 2015

on

OCTOBER 3, 2015

at

3 p.m.

at

BAKKA-PHOENIX BOOKS
84 Harbord Street

Toronto, ON
 

Transferral takes place in an alternate version London, England, where a miraculous medical treatment - one which allows the sick to be completely cured by transferring their illnesses into the bodies of the healthy - has been turned into a form of criminal punishment.

Into this world is born Talia Hale, who upon befriending two children from a "diseased" neighbourhood, finds herself at odds with her politician father, whose campaign to be elected prime minister includes a promise to crack down on her new friends' community. 

Timo's Garden

by Victoria Allenby

Illustrated by Dean Griffiths

Pajama Press

978-1-927485-84-2

48 pp.

Ages 5-8

September 2015

Encouraged to sign up for Toadstool Corners’ Great, Green Garden Tour, bunny rabbit Timo begins tirelessly planning and garden-tending to make his flower garden great.  With rhythmic pairings of activity (e.g., “He trimmed and he tidied. He hurried and he scurried.  He raked and he staked. He worked and he worried.”; pg. 19) Timo works with boundless determination and relentless perfectionsim, leaving him with little time for his friends.  Even though tempted by Hedgewick’s spinach cakes, a visit to the lake, and tennis with Suki, it is only when the rains come that Timo realizes he should have been tending to his friends instead of his garden.

With deft pen and colour, author Victoria Allenby and illustrator Dean Griffiths pay homage to the characters–rabbit, hedgehog, mouse, frog, and badger–and gardens and stories of Beatrix Potter while providing a light, cautionary tale of finding the balance in life.  Unlike Victoria Allenby’s fun picture book, Nat the Cat Can Sleep Like That (Pajama Press, 2013), that focused on true cat behaviour, Timo’s Garden will speak to any reader who gets too wrapped up in seemingly-important attentions.  Moreover, Dean Griffiths’ artwork which has graced over 25 children’s books, providing the realism in Lumpito and the Painter from Spain by Monica Kulling and the colourful monsters in Tweezle into Everything by Stephanie McLellan, both from Pajama Press, complements the message of taking the time to smell the roses.  His endearing creatures, vibrant flowers and brilliant garden designs in Timo’s Garden will transport all to an era when time was sweet and friends were riches not to be overlooked.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *
(A version of this review was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2015, October). [Review of the book Timo's Garden, by Victoria Allenby, Dean Griffiths, illus.]. Quill & Quire, 81 (8): 24.

September 17: Interview with author Amanda West Lewis

*citation below

With the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the S. S. City of Benares coming this September 17,  I reviewed yesterday September 17,  Ottawa author Amanda West Lewis' fictionalized account of its sinking.   Her book tells the story of three British children who find themselves on the requisitioned ship which was transporting ninety child evacuees to the safety of Canada.  Sadly, after secretly embarking from the shores of war-ravaged England, the S. S. City of Benares was torpedoed by a German U-boat on the night of September 17, 1940. Only thirteen children survived.

Amanda West Lewis began to research the incident after encountering a photograph at “The Children’s War” exhibit in London’s Imperial War Museum. Becoming inspired by the stories of the photographed children, she realized that this was a piece of history which had to be told.

Amanda West Lewis has graciously agreed to answer a number of questions for CanLit for LittleCanadians to share a bit more about her book and to help remember the tragedy of the S. S. City of Benares.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

HK: The disaster that occurred on September 17 was all the more poignant because the victims included child evacuees who were being sent to Canada to keep them safe during war.  What did you learn in your research about families who chose to evacuate  their children?

AWL:  It was a heartbreaking time for families. All parents want their children to be safe and healthy. But with little food, and bombs falling nightly, parents feared for their children’s survival. Many women who could afford to leave the cities went with their children to stay with relatives in the countryside. But people with low incomes had fewer choices. People in safe parts of the country offered to take in children. Over one million kids went to stay in farms in Wales. Then people overseas offered to take children in, and the government created the CORB plan. It was a risk, but people knew that the future lay in the survival of the children.

What a terrible dilemma it must have been: choose to keep your children with you in a war zone, or send them away to be raised by strangers in safety. The parents who chose to send their children away did so because they thought it was best. It was terribly painful, but they thought it was the only way to save their children’s lives. The colonies – Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – were far away from the conflict and were seen as perhaps the only opportunity for a good life for the children.

I think about parents in Syria today, and in other war torn countries. If someone said, “We can take your children to safety”, I’m sure they would jump at the chance, even if it meant being separated. Parents want their children to survive, no matter the cost.



HK:  While being evacuated was a traumatic experience for some of your characters, say little John Snoad, others seemed to see it as an adventure, Terry even stating, “Who knew that war was going to be such fun?” (pg. 71)  What do you think affected how children perceived the process?

AWL:  I think a lot of it depended on the age of the child. Adolescents are ready for separation from their parents. We now know that the teenage brain is hard wired for risk taking and adventure, and this was the biggest adventure of their lives. I don’t think it is unusual for teenagers to have seen this as an opportunity. The teens were catapulted into young adulthood, with all of the fun and few of the responsibilities.

For younger children, it was different of course. Some children, like John Snoad, didn’t want any kind of separation from their families. John was clearly a boy who didn’t want to be away for even a night. Others, like Joyce Keeley, were homesick but able to be distracted by caring adults. She and the other 5 year olds weren’t aware of the time scale. A little child doesn’t understand the concept of going away for years. She had no inkling of the monumental change that was happening in her life. It was only later that the younger children began to realize that they weren’t going home.

I think it might have been hardest for the kids who were in the middle, the seven to eleven year olds. As adults, these evacuee children have talked about their sense of responsibility. They believed that they had to be strong for their parents. They felt guilty if they were sad. It was an enormous burden on that generation.

HK:  The children in your story encounter a number of crew and others significant to their experiences: Signalman Mayhew, Commodore Mackinnon, Cadets Haffner and Critchley, Rev. King, Miss Annie Ryan the stewardess.  Which of these were real people and which were based on real people?

AWL:  All of those characters were real people. They all had their part to play in the story. As much as possible, I tried to bring to life elements of their personality that I could glean from my research. Obviously I couldn’t track all of their movements, so what I have done is to construct a fiction based on what we know of their lives.



HK:  If anything speaks to the power of story-telling, it is Auntie Mary’s ability to keep the children’s attention by telling them a story in installments as they wait for their lifeboat to be rescued.  Did this actually happen and was it the story you tell in September 17?

AWL:  Yes it really happened. Everyone remembers Mary Cornish telling the boys Bulldog Drummond stories. I don’t know which ones she might have used as a base, but I read several of them in order to do the research and they all have pretty much the same formula. I imagined that Auntie Mary wouldn’t have known any of the stories very well. After all, she was a single woman, a music teacher, and probably not well versed in books for boys. But everyone knew of the Bulldog Drummond stories, so I allowed myself to weave bits and pieces together, fused with some of my own story telling. I tried to imagine Mary struggling to come up with exciting story lines. I think that as she became increasingly disoriented, her story telling probably became quite surreal.



HK:  Much wiritng has been done about disasters and those who’ve survived them and those who did not.  Why do you think these stories are so compelling for young readers?

AWL:  That’s a really good question. Obviously as I was writing the book I was thinking about how young readers are fascinated by Titanic stories. I think it has to do with an innate desire for risk and adventure. People have a physical response when they read. It’s not dissimilar to actually living through the events, and it turns out that we all like to have our adrenaline stimulated! It makes us feel alive.

I think that young people can read the book and put themselves into the story. They can be excited and scared in the safety of an armchair. And I hope they can be moved by how each character deals with survival and loss.

HK:  If there is an image you keep from the diaster as told in September 17 (not a photograph that you saw), what is it?

AWL:  There are three images that stay in my mind all of the time. They’re based in fact, but I have augmented reality to give a moment of recognition to a couple of the children who didn’t survive.

One image is of Connie Grimmond on the deck with her brothers and sisters. Everyone who survived talked about Connie and how wonderful she was with her siblings. They were a working class family and very, very poor, but Connie was a wonderful “little mother” and made sure that her sisters and brothers were clean and well mannered. I’ve invented a moment for her on the deck holding them, with her arms around them in all of the chaos. I’d like to think she was able to do that in her last moments before getting on the lifeboat. She went down with Lifeboat #8.

Another image is of Joyce Keeley. It is hard not to love Joyce. I have given her a moment with Bess when the torpedo first hits. Later Sonya sees a small child on the deck, holding a large teddy bear. That’s Joyce. I imagined her alone, and bewildered, but with her teddy.

But the lasting image is entirely true and not fictionalized. It’s the image of Ken Sparks waving his shirt so that the pilot could see Lifeboat 12. When I read Ken’s story, I knew that I wanted people to know about him. I think he must have been one of those remarkable thirteen-year-old boys who have an amazing zest for living. I would have loved to have met him.

Sincere gratitude to author Amanda West Lewis for answering my questions 

and to publicist Winston Stilwell for arranging this interview and 

providing a review copy of September 17.

Thank you

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

* Images retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2112768/Torpedoed-clutched-teddies-The-harrowing-story-Nazis-sunk-ship-carrying-90-children-Blitz-America.html and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/15/benares-sunk-war-81-children-dead  on September 7, 2015.

September 17

by Amanda West Lewis

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-507-3

313 pp.

Ages 12+

2013

Every disaster is heart-breaking: for the fears endured, the injuries incurred, the lives lost, the memories wrought.  But imagine a disaster that involves the loss of children’s lives and specifically children whose families had chosen to send them away to safety, a safety never realized.  The heart-break is beyond imagination.

Such is the premise upon which Ottawa author Amanda West Lewis has based her novel September 17.  The story recounts the torpedoing on September 17, 1940 of the S. S. City of Benares, a ship transporting child evacuees from war-torn England to the safety of North America.  Sadly that ship never arrives on our shores.

Though September 17 is told in third person narration, it focuses on the experiences of three specific children:  Bess Walder, 14; Ken Sparks, 13; and Sonia Bech, 11.  Although they will all face the same disaster, their stories are very different.

Bess and Ken are only two of the 90 child evacuees–some frightened, some eager, some with siblings, many alone–aboard the S. S. City of Benares.  Bess Walder is eager to go have an adventure in Canada and resume her education–war does tend to send schooling off track– and perhaps even get a university degree so she may pursue teaching after the war.  Not surprising she suggests to her parents that she and her younger brother Louis be evacuated courtesy of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB),  hopeful of staying with their mother’s aunt in Winnipeg.

Ken Sparks of London, also has a sense of adventure, determined to be a war correspondent, and wearing his father’s far-too-large but good overcoat, he sets off, destined for Edmonton.

In addition to the evacuees and their chaperones, there are other guests aboard, including the three Bech children who are travelling with their mother to stay with cousins in Montreal.  

While the child evacuees are amazed by the food offered to them and the opportunities for play and activities such as drawing, they never forget the dangers explicit to their travels.  Before they leave dock on September 13, the harbour is swept for mines, and there are extensive drills involving kapok vests and lifeboats.  The ship itself is part of an 18-ship convoy  three miles wide which provides protection but also slows down their progress.  

By the time September 17 rolls around, the S. S. City of Benares,  believed to be in neutral waters and safe, is without its accompanying destroyer and corvette escorts. And at 10:03 p.m., the first explosion, a torpedo from a German U-boat, hits. By 10:33 p.m., the ship is almost vertical. While some make it into lifeboats–though not necessarily as practised–others end up on wooden rafts and many people, including Bess, find themselves in the water.

The fates of the children, evacuees and not, and all aboard the S. S. City of Benares is revealed by Amanda West Lewis with clarity and feeling, allowing readers to understand the tragedy from multiple perspectives.  Since the numbers are staggering –77 of 90 child evacuees died, as did 6 of 10 escorts, 51 of 91 paying passengers and 23 of 49 crew–the sinking of the S. S. City of Benares is an overwhelming tragedy.  The few miracles, and there truly are several, will astound readers and provide the sliver of hope that not all was lost.  

It is an astonishing story and one that Amanda West Lewis tells extraordinarily well.  It is alive and arresting, sharing as many perspectives as possible, while providing deeper looks into the genuine experiences of several children.  We learn what they anticipated, what they feared, what they endured, and what happened to them.  It is an extraordinary glimpse into a perhaps neglected part of World War II history, and one that needs to be commemorated all the more on September 17 with September 17 the book.

  ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Check back tomorrow when I will post a Q & A with author Amanda West Lewis about her book September 17 and about the tragedy that garnered her attention and pen.

Speechless

by Jennifer Mook-Sang

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-4267-0

159 pp.

Ages 8-13

September 2015

Jennifer Mook-Sang must have a great sense of humour.  From her characters’ names (Joseph Alton Miles, J.A.M., aka Jelly, and Parker Brown, P.B.–get it? P.B. and Jelly) to the speeches Jelly gives (I won’t give those away!) and Jelly’s clever jabs using art and words to target the self-righteous and downright mean Victoria, Jennifer Mook-Sang finds the means to make speech-writing and bullying into situations that can be handled with humour and aplomb.

Sixth-grader Jelly and all others students in Grades 3 to 6 at Sherwood Forest Public School must participate in speeches but, for the first time, Jelly is eager to compete.  The prize is a tablet computer, something the boy whose TV, computer and video game usage is strictly controlled to virtual non-existence by his parents covets.  But, student council president, resident brainer and high-achieving Victoria won’t even consider someone else winning it, though Jelly is determined “to kick Victoria’s speech’s butt.” (pg. 7)

Sadly, it looks like the stars or karma or the school gods have it in for Jelly who seems to end up in trouble for an assortment of non-malicious actions, including one as a result of helping out at the Food Share Partnership, a local food bank.  And then Jelly gives a great and funny and well-received speech about the redeeming qualities of video games, and Victoria starts to spread a rumour that he copied it from the internet.  This kid just can’t catch a break.  And I haven’t even mentioned how Parker starts acting weird, even believing the rumour; how in trying to help the manager of the food bank with computer issues things become even more complicated; how even after doing well in the competition Jelly has to write another speech and realizes that the “problem was I didn’t have any heart or funny left.” (pg. 129)

But he’s wrong.  Courtesy of Jennifer Mook-Sang’s pen and wit, Jelly has loads of funny left to share.  Take this little gem that starts as an old adage that every child has heard from every coach, teacher and parent:

     It didn’t matter whether I won or lost, I told myself.  It only mattered that I’d done my best and the audience enjoyed it.
      I was such a liar. (pg. 146)

Jelly is honest and refreshing and has a quirky but realistic take on things that I wish I heard from more children.  As a teacher, I think I’d be killing myself laughing every time this kid opened his mouth.  Yet he’s not a distracting or over-the-top class clown.  He does his schoolwork, enjoys writing and has a good heart.  If there’s a way to instill compassion through a read-aloud, I think Speechless could do so.  And still entertain.  And while I wouldn’t want to think of Speechless as a teaching tool, I believe middle-grade teachers could benefit from getting Speechless into their classrooms to introduce students to speech-writing and get some much needed humour into the curriculum.  It’s a nice little package with some important lessons told in such an engaging and amusing way.  Well done, Jennifer Mook-Sang.


  •   •   •   •    •   •   •  

If you’re fortunate to live in southern Ontario, consider attending the book launch of Speechless on October 4 at A Different Drummer Books in Burlington.  And judging by the refreshments, it is sure to be worth a chuckle or two as well.